Financial Services Tax

In the Financial Services tax team, we provide tax advice to businesses from all over the world. We combine technical expertise with a commercial approach based on experience and deep industry understanding.

We offer a full range of tax services to help financial services businesses to optimise their tax position, manage tax risk and meet tax compliance obligations, from UK and international tax structuring considerations to operational tax issues.

We offer deep expertise in areas including the following:

• Asset managers - corporate tax advisory and compliance issues, cross-border structuring, tax efficient cash and profit repatriation, transactional tax support for acquisitions and transfer pricing support.
• Hedge fund managers - advice on fund structuring based on the profile of prospective investors; choosing the optimal structure for the manager, and providing support in the event of a tax investigation; advice on compliance with the investment manager exemption, and transfer pricing advice and support.
• Private equity - implementing structures to mitigate tax leakage on returns on investment, implementing appropriate reward structures for key executives.
• Investment and pension fund advice - product design and launch for investment funds, withholding taxes and the impact of recent ECJ decisions, application of the offshore fund rules and requirements for seeking distributor status, mergers and reconstructions of UK authorised investment funds and trusts, use of derivatives in investment funds and tax considerations for pension schemes.
• Administrators and custodians  - advice on a range of operational tax issues including the European Savings Directive, withholding taxes and tax reclaim procedures.

Our Financial Services Indirect Tax Team can provide assistance on all aspects of VAT and IPT, including

• registration applications,
• advising on compliance and risk control procedures,
• agreement of VAT recovery methods with HMRC,
• carrying out VAT health checks and cost management reviews.

We also have a proven track record of helping financial services businesses to structure the procurement of services and the execution of transactions in a tax efficient manner; making recommendations that are both robust and commercial, whilst having due regard to tax risk and the confines of the regulatory regime.

For further details about financial services tax, please contact Dana Ward, Tax Partner, Partner, on +44 (0)20 7728 3316 or e-mail to dana.ward@gtuk.com.